Nineteen Eighty-Four

In a way, the world-view of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird.

- George Orwell, 1984


George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-four deserves to be read and reread because i think its depiction of a totalitarian society provides deep insight into the relationship between government and the governed. Although the Orwellian state is an extreme, it is precisely in its extremity that one sees the chilling consequences of the state's absolute control over its people. That the novel is as relevant today as it was in the past is reflected by the fact that Orwell's portrayal of the political system in the novel finds resonance in many societies today. Whether it is pervasive propaganda or oppressive governmental agencies, the sustenance of a totalitarian regimes rests, above all, on a relentless, self-perpetuating system of maunfactured truths. Therein also lies the instability of such a regime which is susceptible to implosion.

Of course, globalisation has ensured that the multitude of information channels and their availability has made it difficult for governments to withhold information from their people. Orwell's engulfing totalitarian regime may therefore seem a remote prospect today. Yet the rationale and the means of government control over its people in fiction and in reality aren't that far apart. The hallmark of a totalitarian government is not its brutality, but its capacity and the extent to which it is able to control and shape political thought or, more accurately, the human mind.

Someone wrote in to the ST Forum not too long ago and commented that the reason why the PAP is in power undefeated for so many years is because Singaporeans indeed do support the PAP government wholeheartedly. Such an appraisal of the preponderance of the ruling party's hold on power underscores the ignorance of some citizens of the political realities in Singapore. And it is comments from people like the said writer that makes the above quotation from Orwell's 1984 relevant and insightful even today.